Hundreds of people thronged hospitals, looking for near and dear ones who were on the seven trains that were devastated on Tuesday.
MUMBAI: Hundreds of people on Wednesday thronged hospitals here, frantically looking for near and dear ones who were on the seven trains that were devastated on Tuesday by powerful bomb blasts that killed nearly 200 people and injured over 600.
Doctors and staff at the hospitals struggled to cope with the injured and the people seeking news of missing relatives.
Heartrending scenes were witnessed at the hospitals as some people learned that their loved ones had not survived the terrorist attacks.
Members of two families from the western suburbs, whose kin normally travel by one of the trains hit by the blasts, said at Bhabha Hospital that they had been going from one hospital to another since Tuesday evening but had been unable to trace their relatives.
Manisha Nanavde, weeping inconsolably as she looked for her deaf and dumb son Amit Nanavade (20) at Bhabha Hospital, told visiting Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani about her futile search.
In an act of consideration, hospital authorities took photographs of the bodies and displayed them so that people would not have to look for their kin in morgues filled with body parts.
"In many cases, only body parts like the head were salvaged. We did not want the relatives to face additional trauma and so we took the photographs," said a hospital official.
Most of those injured had head wounds, said hospital officials. Some commuters who jumped out of trains had fractures, they said.
Many of the injured were stunned and unable to answer queries from doctors. Some were unable to speak because of shock, while others had temporarily lost their hearing due to the impact of the blasts, said a doctor attending to the injured.
"There is a possibility that they will recover from this temporary impact but in those cases where it will not be possible, further treatment will be done at a later stage after they recover from their main body injuries," said doctors at Sion Hospital.
Some of the injured said they were frustrated with the inadequate facilities at government-run healthcare facilities like Bhaba Hospital. Some people said they had admitted their injured kin to private clinics and as many as 68 patients got themselves discharged from the hospital.
For some, things ended on a happy note as they discovered that their worst fears had not come true and that their loved ones had escaped death.
There were also large crowds outside hospitals who wanted to do anything possible to help the injured and those looking for their missing kin. Since Tuesday night, many people have made a beeline to hospitals to donate blood or to provide any other help, including getting medicines for the injured.
As more and more Mumbaikars queued up to donate blood, hospital officials said they now had enough blood and there was no need for more donations.
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